Culture Matters has embarked on a bold new series of essays by the theologian and writer Professor Roland Boer, on Marxism and religion. They will explore the potential for religion to offer both reactionary and revolutionary political meanings, in all their complexity. Our aim with the topic of religious and spiritual life is the same as our aim across the arts and all other cultural activities - to unearth and mobilise the radical meanings in religious thought, teaching and practice. The essays will be published separately in instalments, and when completed they will be published as an ebook.

At Culture Matters, we believe the intersection of religion and progressive politics is a field which merits serious study, especially given the history of the English radical tradition and of Christian Socialism. It is also very topical as the intellectual bankruptcy of neoliberalism becomes increasingly obvious to people, reactionary politicians continue to hide behind a socially conservative interpretation of religion, and as recognition of the need for wide-reaching and progressive change in Britain grows.

Organised religion repels a lot of people these days, because of the perception that it is elitist, dogmatic and socially exclusive. But there is a radical strand in the modern Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faiths, based on helping the poor, promotion of the common good, respecting the dignity of labour, and practising solidarity with the socially excluded. This radical strand includes political campaigning against the structural causes of poverty and inequality in the name of social justice, as well as encouraging individual acts of charity.

To take a few examples, all of the main Christian groups - Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics, United Reformed Church, Baptists, Quakers, Church of Scotland - are supporters of Real Living Wage campaigns, which aim to improve the situation of workers in low-paid, precarious employment. Churches of a variety of denominations have come together to help the victims of recent tragedies such as the Grenfell Tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing. And consider also the critical statements made by Pope Francis about capitalism such as, 'We cannot wait any longer to deal with the structural causes of poverty, in order to heal our society from an illness that can only lead to new crises.' The pope has repeatedly cited the pitfalls of capitalism, decrying global income inequality and equating low-wage labor to a form of slavery. He has even said, in that bitterly ironic tone characteristic of Jesus' voice in the Gospels: 'It is the communists who think like Christians'.

Combining a progressive political strand with a radical application of religion could make a useful contribution to the national conversation about the direction of a future Labour Government. It also could empower people to reclaim their spiritual and moral heritage, and help inspire, motivate and underpin local campaigning activity. Just like art, religion can be a tool of oppression, a means of legitimating unfair distributions of power and wealth – but it can also be a powerful tool for the radical liberation of humanity.

We hope these essays stimulate critical discussion, and would welcome critical and creative responses to the issues they raise. We invite people to share the booklet via their networks, join us in the debate and contribute ideas about to how advance this agenda. They are being published and distributed widely by Culture Matters as part of our mission to promote a progressive approach to all cultural activities. We hope you find them enjoyable, educational and enlightening.

In the first essay, Professor Boer discusses Marx's description of religion as 'the opium of the people'. He says:

Marx’s most well-known observation concerning religion is that it is ‘the opium of the people’. The meaning would seem to be clear: opium is a drug that dulls the senses and helps one forget the miseries of the present. So also with religion. The catch is that Marx’s use of ‘opium’ is not so straightforward, for it actually opens the door to what may be called a political ambivalence at the heart of religion.

In the second essay, Professor Boer analyses the various relationships between religion and capitalism, especially Marx's use of the term 'fetish'. he says:

Marx was then able to distil the idea to locate the central fetishistic function of capitalism: money produces money, capital produces profit or interest in and of itself. Only a complex theory of fetishism can explain why ‘capital thus becomes a very mystic being’, especially ‘since all of labour’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself. In this sense can we say that capital becomes the ‘religion of everyday life’.

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Author's Note: Joyce Grenfell (1910-1979) was a British actor, singer and stage entertainer who specialised in comic monologues and achieved huge popularity in the decades following World War Two. Among her best-known imaginary monologue-speakers was a teacher of very young children, among them George who was more than once asked to stop doing something (nature undisclosed). Grenfell Tower was named in her memory.

George Osborne was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 2010 and 2016. He – or his advisors – promoted the drastic and divisive creed of ‘austerity’ that inflicted great damage on many aspects of British social, communal and political life. The cuts to local authority spending on health and safety regulation were adduced by some as having contributed to the catastrophic fire at Grenfell Tower.

'George, don't do that': Joyce Grenfell in the roleOf hard-pressed infant teacher, trying notTo let it get her down or lose control,But at a stage where things have clearly got Just a bit much and now she's left in soleCharge of this endlessly demanding lotOf noisy five-year-olds. What really stoleThe show was having listeners wonder whatHe, George, was doing and how she'd cajoleHim out of doing it, first by a spotOf gentle blandishment, then, as the tollOn her nerves grew, by adding just a shotOf reprimand, and lastly – as the wholeClass seemed to sense a lesson gone to pot – By one more plea before the bell, with drollYet perfect timing, closed her lesson-slot.

'George, don't do that': don't give us all that spielAbout austerity, the debt, how we're'All in this thing together', or how we'llJust have to pull our belts in and adhereTo your fine plan for cutting a great dealWith your old banker pals. We've done 'austere'For long enough to guess it's us who'll feelThe pinch alright and them who'll stand to clearA fortune when the billions you stealFrom those who put the work in yield their year-On-year fat bonus. Know what made it real,What brought it home, that sense we had of sheerUnutterable rage? That you could sealYour devil's pact and no one interfereTo bring those crooks to justice or revealThe swindle in a reckoning more severe.

'George, don't do that': for Christ's sake don't pretendYou haven't grasped the Grenfell link, or takeThe standard Tory view that one can bendThe safety rules and regs for profit's sakeSo long as those affected are low-endIn status terms, with no financial stakeOr friends and influence that might extendBeyond their local patch. And, just to makeThe point more plainly: when the plan’s to spendA bit less on the stuff for those fire-breakPartitions in the high-rise towers, or mendThe cracks less frequently, it's in the wakeOf all your government directives pennedBy jobsworth types who know just how the cakeGets sliced. Losers and immigrants, my friend:Don’t fret too much if cladding starts to flake.

You'll do that, George, you'll let the paupers fry(Crass metaphor: forgive the vulgar taste)So long as they're the ones who just get by,Or don't, while you and your lot are well-placedTo fix it so that no-one gets a tryAt changing things. If we lament the wasteOf talents, lives, or chances not to dieA needless death because you lot embraced'Austerity', then no doubt you'll replyWith some glib chunk of right-wing wisdom basedOn trickle-down. This aims to justifyWhat's really plain old dog-eat-dog showcasedIn think-tank talk to stop us asking whyThey've not run riot, those survivors facedWith the charred tower each day while some rich guyLike you says let's not act with too much haste.

But how to stop you, George, how make the kindOf full-scale revolution that they’ll need,Those tenants yet to come, if we're to findSome remedy for scenes like this and heedThe hard-won lesson that it leaves behind,That blackened witness to the Osborne creedThat, by malignant chemistry, combinedMammon with Moloch, your sharp-suited greedWith everything the system does to grindIts victims down. But then, a point that we'dDo well to keep continually in mind Is how keen the survivors were to leadDiscussion back to life-hopes intertwinedWith Grenfell Tower and show how we'll misreadTheir testimony should our anger blindUs to the fact that those hopes may succeed

Despite the heaviest odds. That's because they'reFlat contrary to every point of yourUnspoken doctrine: that the poor should bearThe greatest burden just because they're poor, Or just because they've not yet done their shareTo fill the vast tax-coffers destined forLong-planned redistribution on the fair(By your lights) principle which goes: the moreYe have, the more shall what ye have declareYou worth ten times as much. The Grenfell scoreLooks bad on your side, George, if we compareYour moral credit-rating (through the floor!)To high-rise tenants with no cash to spareYet with the guts and dignity to shoreAgainst disaster. 'Ta'en too little care'You have, like Lear; these deaths you can't ignore.

In spite of recent refurbishments – fireproofed? –Grenfell Tower was engulfed in flames the full lengthOf its eyesore height ringed by brown-brick mansion blocks(Much better Thirties relics of curvaceous art deco);Now Grenfell Tower is a blackened jagged toothOn the smoking skyline – but still, by night, a whole day afterThe main blaze, orange flames flickered from insideLike the glows from pumpkin lamps lit up at Halloween parties –And those broken charred windows now glareLike the zigzagged grimaces of pumpkins' carved mouths,Once the candles have been snuffed out in their hollowed pulps.

This gutted, lugubrious building burnished black is nowNothing more than a charnel house, those still missingAmong its tenants now presumed consumed in smoke,Burnt out of their tenancies, cremated in their flats, noSpontaneous combustion of a faulty fridge aloneCould have caused such rapid conflagration – no, thoseRefurbishments last year had not been properly fireproofed,In fact, were done more for external aestheticsThan for the benefit of the residents' wellbeing or safety,Simply to prettify the outside of the towerblockTo blend better in with its salubrious surroundingsOf the rich part of Kensington – well now the towerHas been prettified by fire, Kensington's well-rinsedCan survey, instead, a fuming burnt offering, a blackSmouldering monument in Brutalist anthracite,A colossal sooty cactus scorched in the hottest JuneSince '76 (when millions of ladybirds coated Brighton beach).

Landlords, maintenance agents, Tory councillors and ToryMPs had unknowingly conspired to lay in placeThe components for a catastrophe predicted by the Tenants’Association, their complaints and warnings ignored byThe men in grey suits at Westminster, and at KensingtonAnd Chelsea Council – why would any authority listen to the concernsOf social housing tenants with no stakes in anything,Not even the right to justice, courtesy of legal aid cuts,600 impoverished people cooped up in high-piled compartments,Many trapped on benefits through no faults of their own,Or caught in the Russian roulette of zero-hours contracts,Reliant on food banks, many Arabs, Muslims, immigrants,Asylum-seekers and refugees among their numbers,Those whose lives are deemed verboten by tabloids,Now their homes more than metaphorically put to the ToryTorch – hindsight haunts Kensington: outside sprinklersCould have been retrofitted, should have been, in fact.

Now after the flames, the blame games: whose grossNegligence lit this tinder box, what cultural drift of anti-Immigrant rhetoric ignited the match? The flammablePadding in the new zinc cladding apparently helped the flamesCatch! The yellow helmets say they've never seen anythingLike this before... The tower protrudes as a combustibleSymbol of the vulnerability of the disadvantaged,Never have so many people perished for a metaphor,The surviving tenants are spitting tar, now homeless,Will they be given permanent shelter? Some survivorsVoice fears that Kensington and Chelsea CouncilWill take advantage of the tragedy to decant the tenantsElsewhere and refurbish the tower block (and properlyFireproof it this time, presumably) to house better-heeledPrivate tenants – Grenfell gentrified by fire? The arms-Length maintenance organisation might have a handIn this, more profits for future, while tight-lipped ministersOf an arms-length Government avoid the gazesOf camera lenses, mute in suits; and a spinelessPrime Minister is photographed skulking awkwardly in blackAmong the uniforms, looking like the rich distantRelative at the funeral keeping apart from her mourningPoor relations; while Jeremy Corbyn responds more promptly,Goes among the families of the missing, comforting them,Hugging those who are denied even the vent of grievingFor not yet knowing if their bereavement is temporaryOr permanent, surviving relatives who catch on the grapevineOf drip-fed information that the bodies still insideMight be so badly burnt they'll not be able to be identified –Forced out by fire, is this how Grenfell's gentrified?

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The arts are just a part of the weapons of life. Art can make us see and feel reality and help change that reality. Art is revelation. Art is hard work. Art is part of protest.

Jayne Cortez

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.

Bertolt Brecht

The most precious thing in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth.

Rosa Luxemburg
Letters from Prison

The individual will reach full realization as a human creature, once the chains of alienation are broken. This will be translated concretely into the reconquering of one's true nature through liberated labor, and the expression of one's own human condition through culture and art,